Are driveway drinks allowed

[NotPawPatrolAgain]

With neighbours if sticking to the 2 metre rule?

You're allowed to sit in your garden. You can sit /stand on your driveway. It's very likely that neighbours happen to do the same thing at the same time. There are no rules against talking to each other.

Hopefully no rules against common sense yet either. If you can't maintain distance then it's not a good idea to spend time such close proximity. If you can, then where's the problem?

I keep seeing videos of people clapping the NHS at the front of terrace houses pretty much shoulder to shoulder and no one points out how... counterproductive it is.

@HugeAckmansWife. You know, I really cannot be bothered. Pardon the tasteless pun but it really would be a waste of my breath.

It doesn’t fall into any of the permitted categories.

I think that’s because ‘being in your own property’ is a given and no one thought people would be idiotic enough to need express permission to be on their own drive.

Seriously? You cannot just Stay home Protect the NHS Save Lives? Are you joking? FFS. Drinks on the drive. Heard it all now. Some people must be so bored with themselves and their lives

They are home? Unless they rent a driveway somewhere else. Or was this sarcastic? Honestly can't tell anymore with some of the posts on here!

I think people are missing the point here. A minute or two clapping is not the same as getting your deck chairs out over the fence and chatting for 3/4/5 hours over drinks. Chatting at 2m to an elderly resident who has no other visitors is not the same as groups of neighbours, who live with 2/3/4 other people, choosing to create a quasi party when we’ve been asked not to congregate.

Of course there is a grey area. That grey will only get removed by total lockdown, with no going out at all except for food. If that’s what you want then continue to test the grey to its very limits and take up scarce police time breaking up bloody street parties that go too far.

Honestly, it’s not bloody hard. It’s a few weeks of Netflix and being with your families to stop my doctor sister or my cousin nurse or my older dad GP (who has returned to work after retirement) from being overrun with people who choose, for no reason other than socialising, to stretch that grey area to its very limits and as a consequence spread virus.

If you get it shopping, when you can’t get delivery, you can’t help it. If you get it going to your key worker job, you can’t help it. If you’re talking to your neighbour in passing even, while exiting your home to go shopping or putting your bins out, you can’t help it.

If you get it sitting on your driveway because, contrary to the 2m rule, the virus can spray far wider than 2m especially on a non windy day and one cough or sneeze or great loud guffaw can easily spray droplets from deck chair to deckchair across a garden fence, then it’s avoidable. You have voluntarily created those unnecessary circumstances. And it might be my sister or cousin or dad you pass the virus to when they have to treat you. You might take that ventilator off the elderly neighbour who contracted the virus when she went to collect her heart medication from the pharmacy. Or that key worker child who got it from her parents who work at the front line and have no bloody choice.

Of course it’s a grey area, for now. But why on earth would you risk it?

certainly not hysterical about any of this but just fairly straightforward and rational. We are told DO NOT socialise with anyone outside of your own household. You would be socialising in this example

So neighbours can't speak to each other if one is having a cup of tea on their patio and the other is next door hanging out washing?

Plus, the advice does not specify a while list of permitted categories of which, mysteriously, sitting on your driveway having a drink and shouting across to your neighbours doing the same thing, appears.

You could just as easily say it's not OK to read a book in your garden because that hasn't been specified as a 'permitted category'.

@Youngatheart00 - if neither the neighbour or the OP leaves their property, how is it 'going out to socialise'?! Have you misunderstood they will be on the same driveway? They plan to sit on their own drive each and basically have a shouty chat.

I had a shouty chat yesterday with my neighbours, because she was digging up the weeds in their front garden and I was on my way back from my one permitted bike ride. I stood in the road, we were more than 2 metres from each other and loudly asked each other how we were doing, discussed which supermarkets seem to have nice bread in...

Even in total lockdown you are still allowed in your garden - your garden is your home (that you are being told to stay at)

The rules are simple: if it's enjoyable it's not allowed. Hope everyone is sitting on a spike at home.

Yes of course you can as long as you are not sharing/pouring each other drinks and maintain a distance of at least 2 metres. If it's nice this evening my neighbour and I are going to do this. She will be sitting on her patio with the gate open and I will be on my drive.

Where is the not allowed bit coming in?

Sitting outside of house - OK
Neighbour sitting outside of their own house over 2m away - OK
Each drinking a cup of coffee - OK
Speaking to each other - OK
Drinking something alcoholic - still OK

Daring to enjoy the above seems to be where the MN crazies start frothing.

We have a long, shared driveway where my DC have been playing cricket each day. The neighbours we share with are great and when we began lockdown we mentioned the DC possibly doing this and they went straight out and switched their cars about so we could.

One of them is a senior consultant at our local hospital, so isn't taking the Covid situation lightly, but agrees we need to keep them as active as humanly possible because lockdown is tough on everyone, regardless of age.

If you have the capacity to do things at home which will boost you and keep you going without putting you or others at risk, do it. We are going to be locked down a while yet and need to ensure we all stay as well as possible for as long as possible.

I think we need a comprehensive thread with all the kinds of safe fun Mumsnet has decreed to be against "the rules

And call it batshit corner.

@ZaZathecat

The rules are simple: if it's enjoyable it's not allowed. Hope everyone is sitting on a spike at home

Chief of MN Self Appointed Police has spoken!

Truly amazing how some people don’t understand relatively simple guidance. If nothing else, this makes me realise that we need to spend more on education as it is clearly failing a large part of the population.

The Corona Act only imposes limits on when you can leave your home. If you don’t leave your home, you cannot be acting unlawfully.

Also, for those of us who live alone, this sort of real interaction is fairly important. I can and do Skype friends for a chat but not everyone has that option, tech know how, or friends in fact. Neighbours might be their only real contact and a chat over a fence might be the highpoint of their day.

Of course, this is fine. I'm allowed to sit in my front garden and so is my neighbour, if we do so at the same time it's still fine as long as we stay 2 meters apart. Adding a cup of tea to that scenario makes no difference at all. Distance and travel are what counts.

This whole situation has really shown the individuals who have just been sitting there waiting for an excuse to boss people around. Pathetic really.

And I have two close family members who are NHS frontline and they would tell you the same. Major lack of common sense in some of these replies.

The rules are simple: if it's enjoyable it's not allowed. Hope everyone is sitting on a spike at home.

I don’t even have a spike. I do walk round my garden once a day with a heavy boulder chained to me (like in The Simpson’s episode “Homer The Great”). Only when the neighbours are indoors, though. I wouldn’t want to accidentally look at any of them.

Why would driveway drinks 🍷 people sitting on their own drives, be any different from sitting on balconies in ital and Spain during lockdown?

@Marieo, nope not sarcasm.

We are supposed to be socially distancing. There are people who have it asymptomatically. No one really knows the distance an airborne virus travels. We have been told to remain within our own households. For some, this is just too too difficult. I can see that.

I’m sticking rigidly to the rules because if anyone I know, near me becomes seriously ill/dies I can honestly say, I have done the right thing. Others don’t care about that.

Truly amazing how some people don’t understand relatively simple guidance. If nothing else, this makes me realise that we need to spend more on education as it is clearly failing a large part of the population.

Agree, the amount of people who lack critical thinking & are so miserly is very worrying

Ffs name changed do you extrapolate to the nth degree every piece of guidance, policy, statute you read? If Covid 19 could be spread over greater distances we'd be told to stay further apart.

huge you are spot on. My neighbour is single and lives alone. We all had drinks in our respective gardens yesterday and she told me it had been the highlight of her week. She's lonely and although she's skyping friends it just isn't the same.